CA23116 - Open Palaeoecological Data - analysing the past building foresight (PalaeOpen)

Restoring and managing nature during times of rapid environmental change requires knowledge of ecosystem response to climate and land use change on timescales of decades to millennia. Different palaeoecological disciplines have collected relevant, site-specific data during the last decades. Much of the palaeoecological data are currently dispersed across different repositories, databases and largely not publicly available. This Action aims to meet the challenge of bringing much of these data into the public domain, harmonise their taxonomy and metadata, and make them relevant to nature conservation. By combining domain specific repositories and databases, the Action will unlock these data collections and make them available for palaeoecological meta-analysis of ecosystem interactions on a continental scale. This will permit integrated analysis of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem responses to natural and anthropogenic environmental change for the first time. The Action will overcome the barriers between palaeoecologist, macroecologists and nature conservation practitioners by developing and engaging with a new research agenda. Scientific workshops in different parts of Europe will provide formats to interact with local nature conservation practitioners. The research agenda will address the knowledge gaps in nature conservation as well as the need to understand continental scale interactions of ecosystem components, including lagged or threshold responses. A dedicated outreach working group will ensure that the new knowledge is also accessible to the public. Moreover, the group will develop educational material for schools and universities based on the collected data.